


the art of losing

by Kieron_ODuibhir



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: (pretty sure that's an Avengers tag), Bruce Has Issues, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Parents & Children, it's not love if it doesn't hurt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-11
Updated: 2015-01-11
Packaged: 2018-03-07 03:58:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3160340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kieron_ODuibhir/pseuds/Kieron_ODuibhir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>...isn't hard to master. And Bruce has had practice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the art of losing

The thing about losing Jason was, he already knew how to do it.

The first time loss rips the bottom out of your world, it’s all new, all surprising, shocking new edges on everything so that you can cut yourself on joy and peace more keenly than any suffering.

He was eight. Everything was new and sharp to him, then, and he folded that thing called _grief_ inside himself and never let it go. He knew this, knew losing. Had never stopped feeling it, since the first time.

(Except he had, because the pain never stopped but it had blunted, _god_ how it had blunted, he hadn’t even realized how much he’d healed until everything was ripped open again.) Had it hurt this much, even at first, the first time? He’d lost most of his world, then; been unable to believe it could ever go on spinning, and the terror of that was a larger part of the agony in his memory than he liked to acknowledge. This time, his world had only lost one of its brightest centers, and he knew even as the first claws of grief ripped him open and laid him down that it _would_ go on spinning. That as impossible as it seemed now he would stand up all too soon and carry on.

Because he had to. Because he was needed. Because _c'mon, Bruce, we have work to do._

He knew how to lose people, now. Knew the shape of the sorrow and the way it would gentle, eventually; knew how to function through it when it seemed like grief alone would be enough to kill him. He even knew how to mourn, though he resisted doing so, selfishly, self-punishingly, as though it would make any difference to how badly he had failed his boy if he let the pain of it tear and hollow at him for ten or twenty years before he stopped clutching the poison to his heart. As if Jason would have wanted that.

The familiarity of the pain was almost comforting, sometimes. The fact that he knew before it ever happened that the door to Jason’s room, his uniform, his favorite ice cream would bring it all back, that if he had one shred less self-control the smell of a bombed-out building would send him to his knees, that seeing teenaged boys with their fathers would send a jolt of hurt through him like father-mother-child sets always had. But sharper and rawer, and laced with extra bitterness for his other son, the one who was alive and despising him and he deserved it, and he wouldn’t care how much Jason hated him if he could only see him grow up.

That part was just like before. Clinging to the ache of the loss because in some ways it was the last part of Jason he had left, like the shade of the lad’s last exuberant shout echoing through the front hall, and when it finished resounding that would be the end of it. And he _knew_ it was foolish, irresponsibly damaging his abilities even as he threw himself into duty; knew without Alfred or this brilliant, absurd little interloper telling him, or the concerned looks from all the peers he was trying so hard to avoid—it was a child’s reaction, in a grown man.

Pain is nothing, unless you permit it. He had learned that, very early in his training, and graven it on his soul and made it a cornerstone of his way of life. Usually that meant working through pain, absorbing it and using it to make him stronger. But not always. This pain he confronted, embraced, allowed it to wash around him and drag at him; it was real, because he permitted it, and it was all he had left that was more than a mere object, a symbol. This, at least, was real.

Fatherhood had always been difficult, especially come to it sideways the way he had and with a child whose history was as complicated as Jason’s had been, especially considering the work they’d done together. (Irresponsible, destructive, _how could he have taken his boy, both his boys, into that world?_ ) But this part…this part he knew how to do.

Bruce had never been very good at holding onto the things he loved. But he was even worse at letting them go.

**Author's Note:**

> 'Are you kiddin', Bruce? We have work to do!' is how an injured Jason laughed off Bruce's extremely emotional attempts to get him out of the field after a 1987 near-death experience in the issue 'My Beginning...and My Probable End.' (As mentioned in my main Jason Todd story, All the Roofs of Uncertainty.) 
> 
> /The Dark Knight Returns/ had recently come out with its groundbreaking 'Jason was a good soldier' at the time, and Robin's mortality was on people's minds as never before, but it really seems like the kind of moment Batman would think about a lot in retrospect.


End file.
